Using Voice Over in Your Screenplay

How to Avoid the Mistakes Novice Writers Make

Before you read further… This article contains spoilers about the film The Shawshank Redemption. That film was released in 1994, so if you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t feel bad about spoiling it for you! But if you want to see it first, you should stop now and do that.

Recently, in a writers group that I’m involved with, the topic of voice over came up, and a discussion ensued about when it’s appropriate to utilize it. There are a lot of industry professionals who feel that voice over is a dated technique and that it mostly serves as a crutch to writers who use it to ‘tell’ instead of ‘show.’

I disagree with the sentiment that it’s dated, but do find that writers very often use voice over incorrectly which makes their writing appear amateur or even lazy. I don’t want you to fall into that category, so I figured a discussion of what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to voice over, along with a few examples, might help you avoid that trap.

Photo by Freepik

First, let’s define what voic…